Got a Sprint LG G5? You may want to check for system updates in settings, as Sprint has begun to push the Android 7.0 Nougat update to LG's primer-covered flagship. Sprint and LG are both notoriously good with updates, so it's not a huge surprise that the Sprint G5 is one of the first flagships to get a taste of Nougat-y goodness.

The Pixel phones have been out for several weeks now, and a lot has been said about the camera. I will try to comment on some of the things that I’ve felt have been a bit overlooked, in a deeper dive into the Google Camera 4.2 on the Pixel XL. Most of the issues, if not all, should also apply to the smaller Pixel phone.

A note on pixel size, sensor size, and aperture

Starting with last year’s Nexus phones, Google has been advertising “bigger pixels” in their camera sensors, frequently pointing out their 1.55µm size in marketing materials. Relatively speaking, they’re larger than the ones on most other phones and should lead to lower noise, at least according to common belief.

Google has announced this morning that the live place data feature one of our APK teardowns hinted at last month is now official. The feature will allow you to see an estimate of how busy a business or point of interest is right now, which, let's just stop and think about how completely insane the future is for a minute. Your phone can tell you how many people, relatively, are at a place. Just, wow.

Anyway, the rather awesome technology on display here aside, Google has announced two other features regarding places. The first will let you know how long people typically stay at a particular place, theoretically allowing you to gauge how much time to make for your visit to that hot new Asian fusion taco place that everyone's raving about (just me?

While a bit odd to publish well ahead of reviews for the as-yet unreleased product, Google posted the results of independent testing by Allion today showcasing the performance of its Wifi system against similar mesh network products Eero and Luma. The results, given that Google decided to publish them, probably won't shock you: Google Wifi walks away with it.

Using two devices for each system in a 3000 square foot, two-story house, Allion measured speeds of each system at four locations. At the wired access point, Google Wifi was marginally quicker than Eero, but it's at the periphery of coverage and the secondary access point, which was not hardwired to the network, where it seems Google's product is most able to outshine competitors.

We've all heard of contextual launchers - launchers which change what they do or show based on time of day, weather, your calendar, your location, or any other context. However, ts-apps, the maker of AppSales, has a new app in an unreleased, beta state, named Contextual App Folder (CAF), which is a folder that uses context to determine what to show. But what makes it special is the fact that it is a widget, for any launcher or situation.

OnePlus started its existence by hyping up the Android community to a completely irresponsible degree in advance of the release of the OnePlus One. Lucky for them the OPO was a pretty good phone. However, the breakdown of OnePlus' relationship with Cyanogen Inc. made the OnePlus 2 a less appealing device. It was lacking in a few hardware areas and the software was very barebones. The OnePlus 3 was a clear improvement, but just a few months later OnePlus has given it the boot in favor of the OnePlus 3T.

When the Axon 7 launched in China in late May, a more powerful version with a pressure-sensitive display debuted alongside it. That version was only available in China - until now. ZTE has just announced the improved Axon 7 that China has had all along for the US market, and it costs $100 more than the standard model.

Most teardowns show a list of fairly predictable features or changes, but every once in a while something will turn up that isn't so expected. A look inside the recently released Android Pay v1.10 update is a good example. The typical things can be found, like a line about a second tier for loyalty programs and some stuff to encourage users to visit nearby vendors, but the really interesting bit is some text about a "game" that may have real prizes.

Prices for gift cards rarely go down, but when they do, people tend to go berserk for even the smallest discounts. Case in point: for a $50 Play Store gift card, a slash of $5 to $41.99 at Costco may not sound like much, but it's clearly resonating well with some Slickdeals members.